THE PRESIDENTIAL PITCH

There is a baseball in the National Baseball Hall of Fame that is signed by every President dating back to Woodrow Wilson. I’m trying to decide if I want Al Gore or George W. Bush to be the next to scrawl his name on it. Of all the issues they’ve tossed around the past year or so, I’ve not heard any rhetoric on this. Why should either one of them be the 16^th Commander in Chief to sign it? Once I figure that out, I’ll know who’s getting my vote.

You can sigh in exasperation all you want at the issue that concerns me, but it’s certainly no worse than voting for a guy because he’s handsome (Clinton) or not voting for a guy because he has extremely bushy eyebrows (Dukakis). I know people who’ve done both. At least the National past time has a history with American Presidents.

The first sign of the sport getting mixed-up with politics was a political cartoon in 1860 that featured Abraham Lincoln in a baseball uniform with a ball and bat. The main caption read, "The National Game. Three ‘outs’ and one ‘run’." It was about that year’s election.

It seems as if every President has a baseball story. In 1883, President Chester Arthur was the first President to bring a professional baseball team to the White House. President Benjamin Harrison was the first President to attend a major league game while in office (1892). In 1910, William Taft was the first President to throw out a first pitch. He was also supposed to toss out the first pitch of the Washington Senators season in 1912, but he missed the home opener because of the Titantic disaster.

Woodrow Wilson and FDR were considered huge fans of the game. Wilson was featured on the cover of the 1917 World Series program with the caption," A big enough boy to enjoy the National game and a man big enough to guide our country through its greatest crisis." Roosevelt threw out more first pitches than any other President (11) and before he was in office, he managed a baseball team called the Grotons.

Ronald Reagan used to broadcast games on the radio and was the first President to sit in the dugout during a game, Richard Nixon was the first to see a triple play, and JFK had a staff member as his official "Undersecretary of Baseball."

The only two recent Presidents who were kind of "iffy" when it came to baseball were Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. Ford was a fan of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League and used to take his wife to games when they were dating. Carter didn’t like baseball. He was a softball fan. Insert your own joke here.

The candidates in question both have a connection to America’s past time. George W. Bush used to own part of the Texas Rangers. If he’s elected he won’t be the first President to have owned a ball club. President Warren G. Harding owned a minor league team. Al Gore is the first Vice President to ever attend a game outside of Washington with the President while in office. It was Cal Ripkin Junior’s 2,131^st consecutive game.

A President is like the nation’s player-manager. He should know how to win, be able to go the distance, be a leader, give 110%, show up everyday with his "A" game ready to play ball and be able to toss around baseball analogies without blinking an eye. Depending on which pundits you believe, Gore and G.W. both struck out at the debates and both hit home runs. The polls show the candidates in a virtual tie. They’re both fans of the game. It looks like this one is going into extra innings.

Maybe I’ll just write-in Joe Torre.